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I'll save Bullgrit the trouble and quote his initial and my reply from a recent thread that I am pretty sure spurred this thread. Me: Re-reading it, it still strikes me as a situation where the ref may not have been as flexible as he could have been. For starters, why did they have to...

I'm all for sensible discussions and one of the things I like about Enworld is that it doesn't get too rude here (I'm thinking of rec.games.frp.dnd where it used to get outright vile). But I can certainly see why people are more passionate about their rpg hobby. People invest a lot of time in...

As a player had a game once where the ref really wanted to try a gritty, low magic, post-apocalyptic sort of D&D game where healing magic no longer worked and magic was mostly broken. It was a setting that really did not appeal to most of the player's aesthetic senses and while we gave it ago...

You can get the players to do some of this legwork for the less defined deities. It is not unreasonable for them to put some effort into defining their patrons; a lot of refs seem to do this. Require them to flesh out their god(s). In return give them flexibility (i.e., don't nix things they...

Prepare shorter notes- fragments of things you can use. Plus try to figure out what specifically stumps you and prep some material to cover that. Is it pulling together a random critter or NPC? Then make a few up ahead of time. Is it dialogue? Jot downs some phrases you like. Adventure hooks...

Seems workable for the setting. The thing to avoid is a feeling of futility, either at the time or after the fact. That can be quite annoying in the railroading sense. I would making it very clear (through in-game actions and NPCs) that success is very difficult and may be impossible and maybe...

I would cut this campaign off rather than try to salvage it. Sounds like the referee needs a break. Best case he can re-group mentally and try again in a new campaign but more likely, he might be better served by being a player. A once a month game is already difficult for continuity purposes...

I picked them along with gpblins. In many ways, I don't really have any trouble with drow. Like the aesthetic, reasonably well fleshed out, distinct personality. The trouble I have with them is that they feel like a nicely described race for a specific setting plucked out of their home campaign...

Mostly ambivalent about TSR settings except for Dark Sun, which I really don't like. The others I would happily play in but I'd find another group before playing Dark Sun again. I found it somewhat casually put togther. ("Let's turn stereotypes on their head. Hey what can we do with hobbits, I...

Yes, I love it. Very nicely done. Light weight so it is fast. Easy to gather material of different formats from multiple places. Easy to organize material. I still do my session notes in a .doc file but I store odds and ends in OneNote. I use it much as I used to use paper notebooks. Except...

They aren't usually important to my campaign in the sense that the story does not usually revolve around them. But I do use them at various points in most campaigns. Players dread them and they carry a certain amount of lore with them so they have their place.

The sessions per death poll got me wondering how many people allow resurrection in their campaigns. Feel free to comment.

Interesting poll but seems incomplete without also asking about resurrection in your game. Too bad we can’t do a tiered poll of some sort. Death with resurrection is a different beast than death with no resurrection. Most game systems require some material price to come back from the dead but...

I agree and went into some of the same things you suggested in a reply earlier in this thread. More recently, I'm just trying to point out that some TPK situations might be partly the referee's fault and in some case, I would think the referee has some responsibility to fix it.

You are correct; it was generic. Another way to put it is, "if you screwed up, shouldn't you fix?" To me it seems that in nearly any game, the referee is making many decisions that affect play ability and that with so many decisions, mistakes will happen. In such cases, I might be more lenient...

I don't think it has happened either but I believe what Arioso is objecting to is my own statement: Which some how became from Arioso: Asking someone to consider whether you made a mistake is not the same as saying they made a mistake. A little self-reflection and critique seems to be a...

Why is it not possible for it to be suddenly lethal? In your game, are the players in control of every encounter? If there are traveling from point A to point B, they understand all the likely encounters (often the classic 'random' ones) that they will meet on their path so that they can make...

No, not really. In this case, we have the universe of the "strict simultion-ist" and everyone else. Everyone else is inserting their judgement into various aspects of the game. Once that door is open, taking responsibility for TPKs isn't really much of a stretch. If it was your calls that got...

Exactly. And I would include RPGs in the realm of "game" in the sense it is an engagement undertaken as an amusement with agreed upon conventions.

I think the issue is that you, the referee are not some impartial robot processing a simulation of a fantasy world. In most cases, referees are executing their part of a cooperative game. Even in cases where a referee may be trying to remain impartial and do their imitation of a fantasy...